(NationalSentinel) The president, as head of the Executive Branch, is the CEO of the vast federal bureaucracy. The notion that they work for themselves or “the people” is fiction; they work for, and answer directly to, the nation’s commander-in-chief.

But because their candidate – the establishment’s pick, Hillary Clinton – couldn’t manage to beat Donald J. Trump in November, many careerist federal bureaucrats at all level are plotting to undermine President Trump, even though doing so will disrupt the mandate he was given by an electoral majority to govern.

Recent scandals in the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Internal Revenue Service demonstrated that it’s almost impossible to fire federal employees, many of whom reportedly intend to go rogue by not implementing President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Conservatives are hopeful the time has come for civil service reform that would rein in this permanent class of government workers who have voiced outright hostility to the new administration. Some have even called it the “fourth branch of government” or “alt-government.”

“This is a situation where people voted and elected a president who is lawfully trying to complete those tasks [he promised in the campaign], while unelected bureaucrats are willing to overturn the will of the people,” Ben Wilterdink, director of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Task Force on Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development, told The Daily Signal.

In recent days, some 1,000 State Department officials and worked signed a letter of disagreement with Trump’s executive order banning people from seven terrorist-infested countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days while his government analyzes current vetting procedures. And he had to fire acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she announced she wouldn’t defend the administration’s refugee policy.

“If a federal employee doesn’t like the ideological foundation or likely outcomes of a presidential directive, it doesn’t mean that the directive is not legal. It means that the views of the federal employee are in conflict with the views of the president who runs the federal government,” said Neil Siefring, vice president of Hilltop Advocacy and a former Republican House staffer, in a column for The Daily Caller.

“In that instance,” Siefring noted, “the solution should not be to resist the actions of the president in their professional capacity as a career civil servant in the workplace. The solution is for that federal employee to honorably resign, not actively or passively hamper the White House.”

If a federal worker doesn’t want to resign, it’s not easy to get rid of them. They can indeed be fired, but it’s a lengthy process that few managers wish to undertake. The process is loaded with appeals and the system basically protects the workers, even those involved in scandal, illegal and illicit behavior.

So Trump’s job will be to convince enough Republicans to help him reform a system that badly needs it. When federal employment becomes a right instead of a privilege, the American people are ill-served.